Creature Comforts. Or not.

A word about Creature Comforts

In short, there aren’t any. Now, many of us have camped, trekked or roughed it at some time or another. We shop, make lists, pack and head out for some adventure. Then we return home, shower, shave and go out for a good steak. In Lesotho, except for central areas (ie. “towns”), there is no electricity or running water. The school we’re teaching at has a single outhouse with a lean-to door, which is missing most of its boards. So there is a science in drinking as much as one can to remain hydrated without overdoing the intake, thereby necessitating the use of the biffie. Frankly, it wreaks havoc on the personal plumbing. Oh, and we’re privileged; we can afford toilet paper. The rural schools have a section of land (often a hill) where the kids run to drop their drawers when needed. Boys run to one side and girls to the other. What the adults do remains unclear.


The Driving (and soccer)

Oh
My
God.

I think what’s most different is the construction of the highways and major roads. The grades, curves, bends, hills, rakes… whatever they’re called they are clearly not engineered to the same specs as we’re used to. Never mind that it’s pitch black by 7:30pm, that people walk en masse along the side of the road (no shoulder, no sidewalk, no barrier… sometimes even a dramatic hundred meter drop off) and that motorized vehicles share the asphalt with cow-drawn trailers. School kids enjoy stick fighting on the way home, ladies with babies slung on their backs gather and chat roadside, and public transport abruptly pulls over when a new passenger waves them down. Plus, the scenery is so beautiful it’s distracting in its own right!

All of this on steep blind hills with hairpin turns. Yikes!

Addendum: we’re driving a rented Volkswagon hatchback… seats four comfortably, or three and tons of gear as previously recorded. Not meant for off-roading but boy, have we have put this puppy to the test! Today we were invited to a soccer game and the “road” in to the field was hazardous! Our car was at a 40-degree incline for a stretch. Speaking of inclines, the playing field itself was pitched at about 15 degrees – point of fact, the soccer field was on a hill. Makes for some um, lopsided playing! Oh, and unrelated is the fact that the game started 1.5 hours late. The entire village comes out to support the local team and we even met the chief’s wife.


Electricity

Nope. Early to bed, early to rise. Cooking is done by kerosene, which really stinks up a small rondavel, let me tell you. Outdoors it’s small fires. At night, the Basotho either use their super human night vision, a candle or a kerosene lamp. Or the moonlight, on a clear evening.


Water

Must be fetched. This entails a trip to the mystery source with the wheelbarrow and giant jugs, or a hike down to the river. Containers are carted around atop the women’s heads. We filter or add drops to our drinking water, while twice daily water is brought for washing. Ah yes, washing. I haven’t mastered it yet, but it involves a pail of warmed water, soap and two plastic basins. Something about soaping in one, rinsing in the other. I’ve screwed it up every time. A face cloth would have been handy, and we’ve absconded one of mum’s. When done (and hopefully clean-ish) one takes all the used, soapy water and tosses it somewhere off the beaten path. Voila!


Food

We are staying with a lovely 77-year old woman who adopted a young teenager – a local gal whose home life sucks so she kept dropping in to Me’ Blandina’s to see if she could be of help. Eventually Me’ invited her to stay for good. The official arrangement has us paying rent (Dean and I stay in a concrete block style hut) plus a fee for “services”: preparing our food, doing our wash and bringing us water. That makes us sound a bit lazy, but the systems here are best played along with. The other day, however, our elderly landlady took a fall and has since had her arm put into a cast. So she’s laid up and young Monyaloue (mon-ya-do-eh) is working her tail off. All of this to say that our already limited dinner resources have made for strange meals: brown beans, beets, chakalaka (spicy chutney-like stuff) and bread or crackers.

We’ve mastered breakfast though: warm yoghurt (we’re not food poisoned yet) and granola. Almost like home! And coffee. Which we DID bring from home.

Back to creature comforts… most people here don’t have cars, naturally. They WALK everywhere. It’s not uncommon for a person of any age to walk two to six hours in a day to get somewhere. They’d walk more and travel father I suspect, if it stayed light out longer. Walking trails might include the highway, a field, a dirt path or a “road” – typically a rocky, bumpy, uneven red dirt clearing. You’d think, after all this walking, they’d come home to a nice chair, and have a sit. Nope. Rondavels generally consist of a bed (usually insanely uncomfortable) or beds, a kitchen zone and POSSIBLY a table. Guests get chairs and all the good furniture, while the locals eat on the edge of their bed or while sitting on the floor. In short, they are either standing up, or lying in bed.

Of course, all that of which I write is what we are experiencing first hand. Some Basotho are “well off” and live in houses rather then huts. Some drive, some dress well and some have access to the better things in life. But I haven’t met any of those people.


Garbage

Everywhere. ALL over! Kids are trained, in fact, to chuck their wrappers on the ground. It’s a crying shame… there is no infrastructure to collect and deal with garbage, so it’s burned. The town of Hlotse has a municipal group who’s placed garbage bins street side, but as a rule, they simply don’t exist. The behaviour to “put litter in its place” is unknown, and anyway, there is nowhere to put it. We collect our waste and chuck it out in Hlotse whenever we drive in.


The environment

Here’s a description of where we’re staying in Pitseng: Me’ has status in this community, and she has four huts to prove it. She and Monyaloue live, cook and sleep in one, mum and other guests stay in another, Dean and I are in her second and most recently renovated guest hut (mostly reserved for her daughter), and the fourth hut houses corn. Three of four have thatched roofs and hand-drawn patterns in the mud siding. Our hut, as mentioned, is made with concrete blocks and has a tin roof and an indoor thatch ceiling to dull the sound of rain.

It’s a short walk to the biffie, which needs work, as the tin toilet frame has corroded and one needs to be careful not to pee on one’s own shoes.

Most days the dirt yard is swept using straw hand brooms (this requires the sweeper to bend in half at the waist), and a pretty pattern is styled. Chickens and donkeys roam free, while cows and pigs are usually tethered. Neighbours come and go, and there is an abundance of kids. Religion, politics and HIV/AIDS aside, this country has way too many children, many of whom no longer have parents. An orphan is a single parent child while a double orphan has lost both parents. There is a strong sense of community but for heaven’s sake, the church MUST sanction the use of condoms.

We’ve had beautiful hot sunny weather and cool nights. Rain is needed. When the moon isn’t dominating the night sky the stars are a sight to behold.

Dean is outside at this moment playing with the bats. We like them, as they devour the bugs. Well, HE likes them, and he’s chucking cookie pieces at them, which they swoop down and scoop out of mid-air. I, of course, am safely stowed indoors typing…


Added note
Our internet access is insanely slow and as we are staying in a village, we have been more out of communication than even anticipated. But in general, things are grand and we're very excited about tomorrow's circus performance!